“My mountain is quite well, thank you, Evumeimei.” Luvo turned his head-lump to Jayat. “You may call me Luvo.”
Jayat swallowed hard. Being addressed by a rock does take getting used to.
“I’m Jayatin Holly. Mostly people call me Jayat.” He bowed to Luvo. I knew it was to Luvo because I’m not the sort of person people bow to. If they think I am, I discourage it quickly.
“I will call you Jayatin, then. That is more fitting,” Luvo said.
“Luvo doesn’t usually like short names.” I explain things so Luvo won’t try to. Sometimes his explanations are on the long side. “He always calls me Evumeimei, which is the full form of my first name.”
“So, Evvy, which dedicate are you apprenticed to?” Jayat asked. “Rosethorn, or Myrrhtide?”
I shook my head. “I’m a student stone mage. Rosethorn brought me because they don’t feel kindly about me at Winding Circle just now. She and I are used to long trips together. What kind of magic do you have?”
“Just the kind that’s done with charms and spells. It’s good enough for Starns, but that’s all. You won’t see the likes of me at Winding Circle. I could no more hear the voices in nature than I can fly. I don’t know how you natural mages do it.” Jayat grinned. “Hearing stones or plants or water talking to me would make me half-crazy.”
“Well, for one thing, it’s not natural magic, it’s ambient magic.” I had to show off my Winding Circle learning. “Not everyone’s magic goes through things in nature, you know. My foster-mother Lark has hers with thread and weaving. And there are ambient mages who work with carpentry and cooking and metalwork. That’s all things that are made.”
Jayat chuckled. “Excuse my error, O wise woman from across the water.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, feeling better about this trip. It looked like I had a new friend who wasn’t all serious and temperamental, like the grown-ups I traveled with. Rosethorn is fun in her crackly way, but dealing with strangers makes her cross. And I knew Myrrhtide was a fusspot before we weighed anchor. Meeting Jayat was a big relief. Oswin seemed all right, too. He actually had Myrrhtide smiling as they rode together.
“What were you doing in Yanjing?” Jayat asked.
Luvo was explaining about Rosethorn’s and Briar’s trips to see new plants when I felt a wave coming. It was just like the one at sea. The problem was that we were on solid ground. It wouldn’t adjust to moving power so well.
“Tremor!” I yelled.
For something with a tiny mouth, Luvo can sound like a landslide in a small canyon. “Off your horses.”
My body was on the ground. I clung to my reins. My mind and magic darted into the earth to ride the wave in the stone as it raced toward us. The wave roared under our feet, making everything shake. The horses whinnied and reared. A gap opened beside the road, swallowing a few trees before it closed. Our people staggered, clutching their mounts’ reins, as the frightened animals tried to escape. Then the tremor was over.
“Evvy?” Rosethorn meant, did I feel any more coming?
Luvo? I put my hand on his smooth, cool surface.
“There will be no more waves for now,” he said. “It is safe to ride on.”
“Amazing.” Oswin shook his head as Rosethorn and her horse trotted back to us. “Can—who is that? What is that? Can you tell tremors are coming all of the time?”
I let Rosethorn explain Luvo to Oswin. I took Luvo out of his sling so Oswin and Jayat could have a better look at him. Luvo looked at them, too, turning his head knob this way and that. Oswin asked a dozen questions: Where Luvo was from, how he’d left his mountain, when he could first remember walking, things like that.
He might have asked a dozen more, except Myrrhtide interrupted. “We would like to reach our destination before next week.”
“Probably we should get moving, then.” If Oswin knew Myrrhtide was scolding him, he didn’t act like it. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Luvo. Dedicate Rosethorn, it must be quite useful, in these parts, to have your own earthquake-warning creature.”
Rosethorn rolled her eyes, but didn’t speak. Luvo never minded things that I would take as insults. Unless Rosethorn or I explained that Luvo was more than an earthquake-warning thing, Luvo wouldn’t set Oswin straight.
As we rode on, Oswin said, “The tremors are the cost of life here. See our mountain? That’s Mount Grace. The wisewomen say that the goddess Grace was deserted by her lover on their wedding day. She sleeps restlessly, waiting for him to come back. Her tossing and turning causes the tremors. Our rich fields and forests are the home she made to lure him back to her.”
Rosethorn pursed her lips. I looked down so nobody saw me grin. I would have bet any coin I had that Rosethorn was thinking unkindly of a goddess who waited around for a man who treated her so badly.
Suddenly I felt a shimmer in my magic, like sunlight glancing off water. This time I didn’t care if Rosethorn rode on without me. “Mica!” I yelled and jumped off my horse. “There’s sheet mica here!”
Mica lay scattered over a heap of rocks that had tumbled from a cliff face. It lay to the right of the road in sheets of a single thickness, delicate amber-colored glass that would chip away at a breath, and in clumps of different sizes, some of a hundred sheets or more. I picked up a few thick clumps to keep.
“You like this stuff?” Jayat had followed me. “What’s it good for?”